Manufacturers need to embrace artificial intelligence to make their operations more efficient, a consultant said.
As with all Open Mind upgrade releases, hyperMill 2017.2 has a broad range of new technologies and enhancements. This release covers 2.5D through five-axis milling, mill-turn and new modules such as the hyperCAD-S Electrode module.
Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Co., is now in Act III in his career at the automaker. The outcome will determine Ford Motor’s future and his legacy.
When you’re managing a global manufacturing enterprise, there’s no choice but to go big. Large manufacturers, and even mid-sized builders, need the latest and best available technology in fast, real-time enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to handle the rapidly changing situations on the shop floor, often at multiple manufacturing sites located anywhere in the world.
Process improvement encompasses a wide range of tools, techniques and strategies. When properly deployed, shop-floor data collection and monitoring systems can help factory-floor managers leverage key data metrics including overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and total effective equipment performance (TEEP) that measure machine uptime and pinpoint bottlenecks or other problems in order to improve machining performance.
In what shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, challenges for advanced grinding technology from high tech industries range from handling the most difficult-to-machine materials for aerospace jet engine turbines to series production on automotive drive train lines.
Nesting is the process of arranging parts to be cut from sheets of metal or wood in the most efficient manner possible in order to maximize yield and speed the cutting process. By reducing scrap and accelerating the cutting process, fabricators are saving on material cost while running more jobs.
A recent effort by the Norton Advanced Applications Engineering Group demonstrates that for difficult-to-machine materials, grinding can be an economical alternative to other machining processes.
Moldmaking is making a comeback, with more reshoring to North America of mold-and-die manufacturing that left for the Far East and other low-cost manufacturing centers. With faster metalcutting through high-speed machining (HSM) and improved EDM techniques, mold-and-die shops are finding innovative ways to compete with manufacturing operations in traditionally low-cost labor markets.
Taiichi Ohno is often quoted as declaring: “Without a standard, there can be no improvement.” The principles of lean do not work well when everyone is allowed to choose their own work method or work sequence in which to do a job: the outcome is unpredictable; flow and pull are impossible. This reduces throughput and the carefully crafted process develops unanticipated outcomes.
